Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/182

146 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS elected. Had his remarkable campaign of ninety days been longer, his vote might have been larger; yet still a number of influences, to say nothing of the prejudice against the third term, would likely have prevailed. It will be as impossible to con vince most people that Mr. Roosevelt s repeated assertions in 1907 that he would not again be a candidate applied merely to 1908 and not to all years thereafter, as that Washington did not object to a third term, but on the contrary wrote explicitly in a letter perfectly accessible to any body who wishes to read it, that to debar a man from being president three times might lose the country a valuable servant at a crisis. But the cherry tree and third term myths are indestructible. If the Democrats are equal to the occasion they will render the Progressives superfluous. But Democrats have a habit of not being equal to the occasion. If the Progressives show a judgment as cool as their emotions are warm, they may prove as great as the Republican party was once, the phoenix from its ashes. There were enemies of Mr. Roosevelt capable of saying that he had himself shot for stage effect. We turn the pages of our history back to that American cartoon of President Washington being guillotined, and we again recall the Frenchman s remark, "The better I know men the better I like dogs." Let us close with a glimpse of the man